Gabriel Gomez: I’m not Scott Brown’

The one thing the two candidates running to fill John Kerry’s Senate seat here agree on is that Gabriel Gomez is not the Hispanic Scott Brown.Gomez, of Cohasset, is a Republican running as a fresh face, like Brown. But he doesn’t want to follow in the footsteps of the former senator, who was rejected by Massach...

Like Brown, Gomez, of Cohasset, is a Republican running as a fresh face. But he doesn’t want to follow in the footsteps of the former senator, who was rejected by Massachusetts voters in 2012.

Gomez’s opponent, Democratic U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, has different reasons for being loath to utter Brown’s name. For Democrats, Brown conjures bad memories of the 2010 special election, when the former state senator from Wrentham came seemingly out of nowhere and straight into Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Instead, Markey preferred to focus on Gomez’s policies, which he argued, did not at all resemble those of the sometimes unpredictable Scott Brown.

“They don’t,” Markey said. “That’s what this campaign’s going to bear out – that (Gomez is) an old-fashioned Republican thinker.”

Brown’s brief rise and fall looms over the June 25 special election for the Senate seat that was vacated when John Kerry became secretary of state. Spooked by early polls showing him with only a single-digit advantage, Markey and the Democratic establishment are kicking the party machine into gear to avoid another embarrassment and prove that Brown was a fluke.

Local and national Republicans believe they have an opportunity to turn Brown’s example into a precedent. The traditionally low turnout for special elections gives them another shot, and in Gomez they believe that they have a candidate with even better outsider credentials.

Gomez – a former Navy pilot and SEAL – has clearly learned a thing or two from Brown, a National Guardsman who famously traversed the state wearing a barn jacket. Gomez is known to don a green flight jacket, even to editorial board interviews.

“I’ve got it in the car,” Gomez said Wednesday as he stood outside Cape Cod Community College. “My green jacket, I’ve got it right here.”

Gomez reached into the back of an SUV and pulled the jacket over his suit, itself stuck with a Navy SEAL pin. Will Ritter, a spokesman for Gomez and former aide to Mitt Romney, joked, “The first time he got in the car, he said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to change out of this. I’ve got a suit in the car. I said, ‘What? That thing’s awesome.’’’

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has daily calls with Gomez and is working to get donors and senators such as Florida’s Marco Rubio more involved. They are emboldened by early polls that show a competitive race and a résumé that, if topped with a cover of Gomez atop the Capitol dome, could be mistaken for a Republican romance novel.

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“I have no idea what a senator looks like,” Gomez said, when asked about his central-casting appearance. “I mean, it’s a pretty diverse group. I hope it is.”

When a reporter suggested the Senate was not particularly known for its diversity, he added, “Hopefully we’re getting more diverse.”

Born to immigrants who arrived a year before his birth in Los Angeles, Gomez has the Hispanic pedigree, if not the up-from-the-bootstraps story, for which his demographically challenged party thirsts. His father traveled broadly as an executive for the world’s largest hops dealer while his mother stayed home with Gabriel and his brothers in their comfortable home in Yakima, Wash., known for its apples and cherries.

Nevertheless, the 47-year-old rarely fails to mention that his first language was Spanish and that he only learned English upon entering school. A good student and star athlete who won the state’s tennis championship, his ground strokes attracted recruiters at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

He graduated with an engineering degree and became a pilot.

“It was pretty cool to be a pilot back then when ‘Top Gun’ came out,” he told members of the Cape Cod Community College Economics Club. ”

He risked his wings to become a Navy SEAL and married a Peace Corps volunteer. He came home and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1997, eventually making a bundle in Boston’s top private equity firms, a part of his bio he is less open about and which Democrats think is ripe for scrutiny.

If his personal achievements are well established, his politics have proven more amorphous. In a January letter to Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, he sought appointment to Kerry’s vacant seat. He cited his service, but also his support in 2008 for Obama, to whom he has also donated money. But over the summer he emerged as spokesman for a group accusing Obama of endangering troops and exploiting the killing of Osama bin Laden. (Markey used split-screen shots from that video, with Gomez’s face beside bin Laden’s, in his first ad. That the congressman went negative so early is another sign that he is worried.)

A few months ago, Gomez called neighbor Peter Buckley to let him know he was considering a bid for the Kerry seat if Brown didn’t run. Buckley suggested he call Republican Massachusetts power broker and close Romney aide Ron Kaufman, a Quincy native. Gomez now also counts Gail Gitcho, Romney’s former communications director, and other Romney alumni, including Ritter, as advisers.

Asked if he’d like to have Romney with him on the trail, he said, “I can’t control what other people do” and made other noncommittal statements before saying, “I’d be happy to have Gov. Romney’s help.”